U.S. Hypocrisy: We Claim To Defend Freedom, But We Spy On Our Friends And Intercept All Their Data

Why has the United States been bugging the offices of EU diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic? European officials are absolutely seething with anger about reports that the NSA has been using “Cold War methods” to spy on EU diplomats. Apparently the NSA had planted bugs in EU offices, had intercepted phone calls and emails from top EU officials, and had even tapped directly into the computer systems of “our friends”. EU diplomatic offices in Washington D.C. and the EU’s mission to the United Nations in New York were two of the primary targets where this type of surveillance was employed. Some EU politicians are so outraged by this behavior that they are threatening to derail sensitive trade negotiations that are currently taking place. And of course it is perfectly understandable that they would be outraged. The United States holds itself up as the great defender of liberty and freedom in the world, and yet we have been spying on our friends as much as we possibly can. How in the world is the rest of the globe supposed to look at us as the “good guys” if we are openly admitting that we are going to intercept their phone calls, emails and all records of their Internet activity and keep that information forever? This kind of hypocritical approach is going to cause us to lose even more friends and make even more enemies. If we keep going down this road, will just about everyone in the rest of the world end up hating us?

It was Der Spiegel that broke the story about how the NSA has been specifically targeting EU diplomatic offices for surveillance. The following is an excerpt from their original report which sent shockwaves all over Europe…

Information obtained by SPIEGEL shows that America’s National Security Agency (NSA) not only conducted online surveillance of European citizens, but also appears to have specifically targeted buildings housing European Union institutions. The information appears in secret documents obtained by whistleblower Edward Snowden that SPIEGEL has in part seen. A “top secret” 2010 document describes how the secret service attacked the EU’s diplomatic representation in Washington.

The document suggests that in addition to installing bugs in the building in downtown Washington, DC, the European Union representation’s computer network was also infiltrated. In this way, the Americans were able to access discussions in EU rooms as well as emails and internal documents on computers.